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Saturday, February 19, 2011

Spring Bling

Hello jellos!

Anybody else wishing for spring? Well it already sprung on my nails. :P

I just want to begin by sending out mad props to Ainos at Glammed-Up for all her deliciously layered manicures. They remind me of those intricately hand painted silks I saw when I was in the fibre department of my art school. She's really inspired me to look at every polish for stamping purposes, to layer stamps and polishes and to try for partial stamping too! This is my first purposefully layered manicure. Not ONE special stamping polish was used!

I started with a base coat of Seche Clear, then one coat of Sally Hansen Insta Dri Lickety-Split Lime. When that was dry I sponged on three layers of OPI Green-Wich Village three quarters of the way up my nail, then a few layers of Sinful Colors Show Me The Way just at the tips.

My next step was to stamp a leaf pattern horizontally across each nail at about the halfway mark. To do this I used Revlon Matte Suede Emerald City and Bundle Monster image plate BM11 (the outline leaf rather than the solid leaf pattern). I was pleasantly surprised at how the stamp showed up, plus I was excited because I knew that matte polishes have a subtle glimmer after top coat is applied so I knew it would be purdy. :P

I then used GOSH Metallic Green and BM10 to stamp a random spray of little flowers. It also hinted at a dewy sparkle.After that step I thought I failed my nail. I used GOSH Metallic Purple and BM06 to stamp the Dalia-esque flower. There wasn't very much contrast at all and it just looked like a light metallic pink blob on top of all that work! But I have seen stamping done over top of smudges of color-especially with flowers-before so I hurriedly chose the Revlon Matte Suede Ruby Ribbon and stamped on the flower image from BM03 over top. SAVED! And it looked prettier than I could have hoped!

I only placed the pink flowers on every second nail, then I placed rhinestone stars in the center of every pink flower, and a flower rhinestone coupled with a tiny round rhinestone on the other four remaining nails just to even out the sparkle.

Come on Springtime! :DThanks again for stopping by. I can't believe how my list of friends has grown and I thank you all for you support and comments! I want to say that I am on a hunt for GOSH Holographic and if I find some I'll buy two! One for me and one for my giveaway! Still working on that puppy.